


Coffee Break

by WisteriaCross



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Coffee Break, Dark Will Graham, Diners, Hannibal - Freeform, Shy Will Graham, Smile, Someone Helps Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 19:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7451932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WisteriaCross/pseuds/WisteriaCross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes even the best fishermen need a coffee break.<br/>"What did she think she was doing? It was almost two in the morning, now was not the time to start up conversations with shady, twitchy strangers, who, in all honesty, could have just committed murder before walking in for some food."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee Break

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime during season 2.

“Do you want a refill?”

The man looked up and blinked, as if Helen had roused him from some deep sleep.

“What?” His voice was barely more than a whisper, yet so ragged she could’ve sworn she felt the frayed edges trailing across her skin.

Helen’s mouth curved upwards in a polite smile. “I asked, if you wanted a refill…For your coffee.” She shifted her weight onto one hip, and raised the coffee pot she held to further press her point.

He seemed lost. This new customer, the young brunette had never seen before, appeared to have vacated his body. The green eyes that watched her were the color of moss, but there was only the faintest fluttering of life behind them. It was an unnerving gaze and she found herself sliding her eyes away from it.

“Yes,” He murmured after a pause. “A refill would be nice.”

It took Helen a moment to register his words; she’d been too busy watching his mouth smile while his eyes remained achingly hollow. It wasn’t just that his gaze was tired, his gaze was bone weary exhausted.

“Are you okay?” She asked the total stranger at her table, as she took the cold mug and poured scorching black liquid into it.

Mentally she gave herself a good hard talking to. What did she think she was doing? It was almost two in the morning, now was not the time to start up conversations with shady, twitchy strangers, who in all honesty could have just committed murder before walking in for some food. Lately there’d been a lot of murders, a lot of disappearances, and she wasn’t planning to be the next body on the news.

She looked him over and frowned as his mouth answered “Fine.”

Like hell, Helen thought to herself. “No, really; are you alright?”

He looked at her again and she was taken aback by the soul that desperately pushed itself up against the green glass eyes. He looked at her different, as if he were a stray to whom she’d carelessly thrown a bone, and was now wondering if she meant him harm.

“Sit.”

Helen startled at the word. It should have sounded like a command the way he said it, but there was nothing firm or hard in his voice.

She glanced at Jerry who was in the kitchen staring at the TV, the stove cold and the skillet empty.

“I’m really not supposed to.” She murmured chewing her bottom lip until she tasted dirty pennies under her tongue.

He didn’t ask her again.

Helen sat.

Fidgeting with the edge of her uniform, she surveyed the strange stranger.

He looked like a kicked dog; unruly brown hair, large green eyes framed by hollow bags so deep and dark it looked like he’d taken punches to both eyes. Here was a man who never slept. Stubble coated his jaw and his hands shook as they wrapped around the hot mug. His mind seemed to constantly be adrift since he only pulled away once his marble skin turned a painful red.

They sat in silence and he watched her back from beneath long curved lashes she would’ve killed for.

 “Do you want some?” He pushed the untouched drink towards her, and Helen watched her reflection ripple in the black liquid. Her mouth looked stretched out, like she was screaming with no voice, her eyes appeared to be melting off her face as they undulated; pitch coffee black.

She ignored the shiver that dripped cold water down her spine and waved the coffee pot she’d set beside her on the table between them. “I think I have more than enough.”

He gave a wry smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I should warn you, I’m not very good company.” His voice was like a phantom, there one moment, gone the next, echoing in a person’s mind until they started questioning whether they’d heard it at all.

“That’s alright. I’m the one who’s here to be _your_ company; no?”

The green eyes focused suddenly and Helen felt that for the first time he was really looking at her. A heart beat later he smiled, a sudden genuine smile that made Helen’s heart constrict painfully in her chest.

It was beautiful. It transformed his harsh features, and she wished it would stay.

 Her fingers twitched, her lips parted as she searched for something, anything, that she could do to make the smile last a little longer. She found nothing though and too soon it left, blown into the past by the icy wind of the present. The stranger did not smile again though they sat for an hour, nothing but words and a cup of coffee between them.

He eventually got up to leave.

“Thank you.” He said laying several bills on the table beneath the cold mug, as he shrugged into his trench coat.

Helen glanced at the money on the table top and felt both her eyebrows rise. It was more than double the price of the black coffee he’d mostly left untouched. “I just served you coffee.” She chuckled, but the laughter died in her throat as she watched him, eyes widening.

From one of the deep pockets of his overcoat, he pulled out a pair of leather gloves and slipped them on, from the other an equally black scarf. He ran his hands through his hair in a practiced motion that reformed it so it no longer looked as if the wind had been tousling it. His posture changed, his carriage shifted, he gazed up at her and Helen involuntarily, stepped back. This man standing before her was a whole other creature.

“You kept me company.” He smiled, but it was a cold, calculated, stretching of lips. Not an inch more than it was supposed to be. Nothing like the smile she’d witnessed before. “I needed the break.” Life flickered behind his eyes for a moment, and then it was again gone .

He squinted at her name tag and she wondered if he wore glasses. “Thank you, Sophie.”

“Helen!” She corrected quickly. “I’m wearing Sophie’s uniform because mine got dirty right at the beginning of my shift, so...I’m Helen.”  She repeated again voice subdued, as she tried to find a way to rationally explain why she wanted him to know her name.

He seemed to understand because he responded with another real smile, one that lit up his features and touched his eyes. “Thank you, Helen.” He stretched out a hand for her to shake. “I’m Will.”

Helen reached for his hand before pulling back and wiping her already clean hands on her apron. “Sorry,” she mumbled abashed. There was something untouchable about him now, that hadn’t been there before. A feeling that pressed down on her as if he were one of the expensive paintings in a French museum that she knew she shouldn’t touch.

He caught her hand when she extended it again, leather gloves scratching against bare skin. Animal flesh, abused, stretched, and twisted encircled her hand for a blood curdling moment. Helen swallowed hard and retracted her hand as soon as she could. Dark spiders erupted from her palm and careened up her arm beneath her skin. She glanced up at the stranger, lips parting, a question blooming on the roof of her mouth for a heartbeat before it withered and died in the same breath.

“Be careful Helen.” Will said and just for a moment, for the expanse of a heart beat and no more, the real, exhausted, ragged man she’d first seen made an appearance. It touched his eyes, surfaced in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, wavered in the brief curving of his shoulders and lit a spark of warmth in his voice. Then as if someone had blown out a flame it was gone.

A different man, one made of shadow and ice left the diner. Out the single entrance, and back to whatever world he’d left behind.

Helen blinked and running her palms over her still pearled arms pocketed the generous tip and went back to wiping down tables in the empty diner.

**Author's Note:**

> All grammatical errors are mine.


End file.
